The Civil Wars' much-anticipated self-titled sophomore album will be released Tuesday, but fans can take a free advance listen via iTunes at this link now. One of the most buzz-generating new groups of the past few years, Joy Williams and John Paul White dazzled critics and audiences alike with the stark, haunting and beautiful vocal harmonies from their 2011 debut, "Barton Hollow." Two Grammy Awards and a high-profile spot on the "Hunger Games" soundtrack later and the duo seemed on top of the music world. But it all seemed to crash down with the abrupt cancellation of a European tour and a quickly announced extended hiatus due to "internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition."

White and Williams still aren't talking to each other, but they did manage to harness the emotion from the split as they created this new album. We'll have a full review on Tap Milwaukee Tuesday afternoon. But, for now, you can explore the beautiful, yet heartbreaking results of The Civil Wars' own internal discord that is discussed by Williams in this extended NPR interview from today and also captured in the short behind-the-scenes video below from the making of the album's song, "The One That Got Away." | Aug. 2, 2013»Read Full Blog Post

Rico Love's favorite songs include "There Goes My Baby" by Usher, "Sweet Dreams" by Beyonce, and "Motivation" by Kelly Rowland. See music videos for these songs below, and the video for Love's debut single as a solo artist, "They Don't Know."

Stephen King once toyed with writing a story about traveling inside the pillow on which H.P. Lovecraft laid his head each night, en route to creating the nightmarish tales that King rightly describes as "uniquely terrible in all of American literature."

Daunted and even frightened by such an assignment, King never did it, concluding that the idea of trying to "put all that into a story" would be "ludicrous." | Feb. 16, 2014»Read Full Article